Maxim Edwards

Turkish officials, in 2015, welcome the first group of Meskhetian Turks that the country agreed to repatriate from Ukraine. Turkey has just received the last group of resettlees. (photo: TOKI)

Turkey has accepted the last of thousands of Meskhetian Turks from Ukraine whom it has agreed to take in as part of an ambitious resettlement program for the multiply exiled post-Soviet people.

On November 16, 185 Meskhetian Turks from Ukraine arrived in Turkey, the sixth and final group in a resettlement program launched by Ankara in 2015. Of all the peoples deported en masse to Central Asia and Siberia during the Soviet period, the Meskhetian Turks have proven among the least successful in their attempts to return home, and speaking to Turkish media some expressed hope that this would be their final stop after being exiled several times over the past seven decades.

In November 1944, the entire Meskhetian Turk population of around 100,000 (estimates vary) was deported to Central Asia from their home in remote south-western Georgia. This was part of a broader World War II practice of exiling entire groups of people whose loyalty Moscow doubted, including Chechens and Crimean Tatars. In the case of the Meskhetian Turks, the Soviet authorities suspected them of being “engaged in smuggling, contraband, and recruiting spies for the Turkish intelligence services.”

The Meskhetian Turks trace their origins to the historic province of Meskheti, a large portion of which today lies in Georgia’s south-western province of Samtskhe-Javakheti, along the border with Turkey. Some prefer the moniker “Ahıska Turks”, referring to the region’s capital of Akhaltsikhe.

Osman Kavala, a prominent Turkish activist and philanthropist, en route to the Aghtamar Armenian church on an island in eastern Turkey's Lake Van. (photo: Maxim Edwards)

Turkey has detained an influential Turkish businessman and philanthropist who has been one of the leading voices in Turkey’s ongoing struggle to come to terms with a dark chapter of its history.

Osman Kavala was arrested at Istanbul’s Atatürk airport October 19, after returning from a meeting with the Goethe Institut in the south-eastern city of Gaziantep. Kavala was detained for an initial seven days; the T24 news agency quoted his lawyer Ferat Cagil as saying that he was taken to the city’s counter-terrorism police department and that a “secret inquiry” had been launched concerning Kavala.

It appears that Kavala could have been caught up in Ankara’s ever-widening hunt for those linked to exiled cleric Fethullah Gülen, recognized as “terrorist” by the Turkish government. Sources close to the Turkish interior ministry told T24 that Kavala’s detention was in connection with meetings he had held before 15 July 2016.

Anatoly Bibilov, de facto president of South Ossetia, at a ceremony marking the first day of the 2017-2018 school year. (photo: http://presidentruo.org/)

The school year has just begun in South Ossetia, but it could prove to be a strange one for the territory’s few remaining ethnic Georgians.

From this year onwards, all Georgian-medium schools in the self-declared republic are to shift to the Russian language (Georgian will remain an elective subject).

The change is to begin gradually, starting with the first to fourth grades, with an additional grade to transfer to Russian-language education each subsequent year, the territory’s de-facto minister of science and education Natali Gassiyeva reported in August.

In an interview with the news site South Ossetia Today, Deputy Education Minister Elisa Gagloeva said she hoped that Russian-language education would aid Georgian children to eventually find a place in South Ossetia’s universities. Gagloeva added in a July interview for Nykhas that the territory’s Georgian-language schools continued to use textbooks from Tbilisi, and that the de-facto authorities simply did not have the resources to translate their own curriculum into Georgian.

Of the territory’s 53,532 inhabitants (according to its last census, conducted in 2015), some 3,966 are ethnic Georgians, making them the second most numerous ethnic group. While most of its Georgians have fled the territory, 2,337 still live in the Akhalgori district, where they comprise 55% of the local population.

Armenia is the most ethnically homogeneous of all the post-Soviet states. But it has become a pioneer in the Caucasus by being the first country in the region to offer guaranteed parliamentary representation to its minority communities.

The small village of Aknalich, about 35 kilometers (22 miles) west of Armenia’s capital, Yerevan, will soon be home to the world’s largest Yazidi temple. For a people striving to rebound after a 2014 massacre by Islamic State militants in Iraq, the structure is a symbol of resilience.